Classical For Everyone

Representing the weather with music is probably an ancient practice. In our earliest superstitions the percussive blasts of thunder would probably have been mimicked to either flatter or placate the spirit world. And perhaps whoever was organising the noisy tributes to the sky gods got something of the same thrill as composers might when they decide to use the weather for inspiration. In the next hour I'm going to give you a sort of chronological meander through what a handful of composers have done with the idea of storms over the last three hundred years with music from Georg Phillip Telemann, Ludwig van Beethoven, Ethel Smythe, Gustav Mahler, Claude Debussy, Jean Sibelius, Dmitri Shostakovich, Benjamin Britten and John Adams.

The name comes from the night of the week when for some of us, the demon of insomnia hits the hardest… and because my preferred antidote is getting lost in some music. Of course this series is for everyone… but it is perhaps intended a little more for those of you whose sleep has been troubled. The idea of the special is to play just one piece, uninterrupted and in its entirety… with a few minutes of background explained at the end of the episode. This month… Cesar Franck's Symphony in D minor from 1888. Performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Seiji Ozawa.

Antonio Salieri was born near Verona in 1750 but lived most of his life in Vienna. And in the 1780s he was possibly the most successful composer in Europe… writing the music for over forty operas. Later in life he taught Schubert and Liszt. He worked with Beaumarchais and da Ponte, and Goethe was a fan. But if today the name Salieri is even vaguely familiar… it is not because of his music… it is because of a rumour implicating him in the death at a young age of another Vienna-based composer. Time to set the record straight. And play some great neglected music.

Classical Music for New Years Eve seems to be dominated by nineteenth century Viennese waltzes and eighteenth century music for fireworks. All nice stuff but I wasn't after something for New Years Eve. I wanted music for New Years Day. And that led to thoughts about renewals, beginnings, clean slates, optimism and second chances. And mysteriously that line of thought led to the idea of dawn and sunrise. So in the next hour and a bit there will be music about that very pretty time of the day... from Maurice Ravel, Joseph Haydn, Ottorino Respighi, Benjamin Britten, Edvard Grieg, Carl Nielsen, Peter Sculthorpe, Augusta Read Thomas and Ludwig van Beethoven. Happy New Year!

Sorcerers, Toys, Wolves, Volcanoes and Fossils. Music for young people… but why them… and why now? In some parts of the world people are having a bit of a holiday as this episode goes out… and you may have your children… or nephews, nieces or grandchildren lying around your home or stuck with you in your car. This is music for them. It can be enjoyed by anyone… but this is a collection of music that can be great early experiences of classical music for young people. Music from Michael Haydn, Paul Dukas, Camille Saint-Saëns, Gareth Farr, Sergei Prokofiev, Benjamin Britten and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

In this episode there will be an amount of Christmas music from the western tradition… which I think you might have to expect from a podcast with the word 'classical' in the title but this is not really a celebration of mangers, shepherds, wise men or difficult to explain conceptions… though I have to confess, some shepherds snuck their way in.  A certain amount of the music is just there for the sheer joy of it. Music that has a festive feel and in some instances has a certain holiday exuberance. Works by Corelli, Bach, Mendelssohn, Saint-Saëns, Liszt, Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky, Schoenberg, Mozart, Lilburn and Kats-Chernin.

Music from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Maurice Ravel, Morten Lauridsen, Ralph Vaughan-Williams, Philip Glass and Benjamin Britten… chosen pretty deliberately for its calming qualities. I'm guessing that quite a few of you are balancing the joys and challenges of the holiday season. So if you just want to put your feet up… or you've come to the end of a day with too much red and green in your world and are unwinding… or perhaps heading toward sleep, then I hope you'll enjoy this episode  called 'Lullabies and Reveries'. And I'm perhaps using the word 'lullaby' in a broad sense… who says toddlers are the only ones who deserve evocative music to carry them to a dreamy state.

The title of this episode is perhaps a little misleading and it certainly contains a contradiction… namely, if I have a recording, and I can play it to you, then really, is 'forgotten' the right adjective? But it is, I hope you'll agree, a little catchier than… 'music from Antonio Vivaldi that might get a bit more prominence if his set of solo violin concertos called 'The Four Seasons' wasn't so extremely popular'. And as we go along, I'll tell you a little about the remarkable journey of Vivaldi's original handwritten scores and how surprising it is we have any of this music at all.

The name comes from the night of the week when for some of us, the demon of insomnia hits the hardest… and because my preferred antidote is getting lost in some music. Of course this series is for everyone… but it is perhaps intended a little more for those of you whose sleep has been troubled. The idea of the special is to play just one piece, uninterrupted and in its entirety… with a few minutes of background explained at the end of the episode. This week… Philip Glass' 'Low' Symphony from 1992. Performed by the Brooklyn Philharmonic conducted by Dennis Russell Davies.

From playing piano in the waterfront bars of Hamburg in his teens, through the failed premiere of his first Piano Concerto, his fortuitous friendship with Clara & Robert Schumann, reviving the String Sextet… to writing a Requiem more about the living than the dead; Johannes Brahms created incredible music well before he became a grand old man of the nineteenth century symphony. Performances by Serkin, Szell, Cleveland, Amadeus Quartet, Ugorsky, Ashkenazy, Perlman, Tuckwell, Eschenbach, Klemperer and the Philharmonia.

In recent years music written by women has at long last begun to be commissioned, programmed, performed, recorded, discussed, reviewed, studied, and celebrated. And of course, most importantly, composed… in greater and greater quantities. Last time I checked women account for half the planet's human population and if this podcast is called 'Classical For Everyone' then perhaps the music should be from 'everyone'. And even though I've scattered some wonderful music written by women through earlier episodes of the podcast, there is now so much great music available in great recorded performances, it feels like it could be time for the men to make just a little more room on the turntables. Music from 1690 to 2015 by Jennifer Higdon, Isabella Leonarda, Maddalena Sirmen, Fanny Mendelssohn, Mel Bonis, Ida Presti, Anna Clyne and Elena Kats-Chernin.

An episode back in late May 2025 featured music written for the clarinet from the 20th century. This is a companion show goes back to close to the invention of the clarinet with a work from 1755 and then finishes up with a gem from 1894. Music from Johann Stamitz, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Carl Maria von Weber and Johannes Brahms. My AI friend Claude came up with the title of the episode and I hope you find 'The Clarinet... Masters and Masterworks' a pretty accurate description. 

At the end of the last episode Georg Friedrich Handel had just composed the anthem 'Zadok The Priest' for the coronation of King George II of Great Britain. The year was 1727 and it was the same year that Handel; who had grown up and begun his career in what is now Germany, and who had spent an intensely formative four years in the city states of the Italian peninsula, was granted British citizenship. In the next three decades he would write another dozen operas, over twenty oratorios, a slew of concertos, and books and books of keyboard music. More than enough for a second hour of music by this incredible composer.

I hope you're in the mood for some truly beautiful music… much of it involving singing. I don't know if I can convert anyone to the delights of early 18th century opera but the songs I'm going to play you in this episode are I think some of the most exquisite ever written. Handel was born in 1685 in Halle near Leipzig in what is now north-eastern Germany and died in London in 1759. By the time he died he was not just the most successful composer in Great Britain… he was one of the most successful people in the nation. And here is a little quote generated by Claude  whilst I was researching this show. It is I think a pretty good summary of why Handel's music has persisted for three centuries… 'The music combines German rigor, Italian lyricism, and English choral traditions into a distinctive, accessible style characterized by memorable melodies, dramatic contrasts, and psychological insight.'

Probably adopted from early pagan traditions, 'All Hallows Eve', which became Halloween; was, and perhaps in some places still is, a night of rituals to call on the spirits of saints and martyrs for our protection in the year ahead; and prayers for the souls of loved ones who might not yet be fully at rest. So when I call this episode 'a different Halloween' all I really mean is that some of the music in this episode is more about sincere spirituality than trick-or-treating. But there are still one or two creepy concessions to today's Halloween. The music is from Modest Mussorgsky, Franz Schubert, Sergei Prokofiev, Rodrigo de Ceballos, John Tavener, Phillip Glass and Gabriel Fauré.

The name comes from the night of the week when for some of us, the demon of insomnia hits the hardest… and because my preferred antidote is getting lost in some music. Of course this series is for everyone… but it is perhaps intended a little more for those of you whose sleep has been troubled. The idea of the special is to play just one piece, uninterrupted and in its entirety… with a few minutes of background explained at the end of the episode. This week… Aaron Copland's Third Symphony from 1946. Performed by the New York Philharmonic conducted by Leonard Bernstein.

This corner of classical music is more generally known by the odd term 'chamber music' but please don't let that stop you from experiencing some incredible music. This is music originally intended for smaller performance spaces… sometimes even just a dining room… written for a small number of instruments and by virtue of that the connection between players and audience can be more intimate and more intense. The music in the episode is by Anne Cawrse, Giovanni Sammartini, Sergei Prokofiev, Felix Mendelssohn, Gareth Farr and Samuel Barber.

I am looking out at the New York skyline as I record this episode and in the distance in particular I can glimpse the Ansonia Building. Completed in 1904 as an apartment hotel, it was for the early decades of the 20th century popular with visiting European composer/performers who would supplement their income with concert tours of the USA. In particular Sergei Rachmaninoff and Igor Stravinsky both stayed at the Ansonia… with Stravinsky becoming a frequent resident for over a decade. Researching that building's connection to classical music, I discovered that a narrow stretch of New York's Upper West Side around the Ansonia had also featured in the lives of the composers George Gershwin, Gustav Mahler, Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein. So, today you're going to hear music connected to the Upper West Side. Some West Side Stories, if you will.

On January 27th 1786 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart turned 30. He had already written an astonishing amount of music of an incredible standard. He had been happily married to Constanze Weber for three years and their son Karl Thomas was fifteen months old. After moving to Vienna from Salzburg in 1781; Mozart had by 1786 reached perhaps the most economically secure position he would ever have. Essentially he was an in-demand freelance performer / composer with an emphasis on keyboard works and a growing reputation in the court of Joseph II, the Emperor of Austria. Enjoy excerpts from a piano concerto, a symphony, small ensemble music, a solo piano work, a horn concerto and a quite popular opera.

Benjamin Britten is today perhaps best known for his operas which included 'Peter Grimes', 'The Turn of The Screw', 'Billy Budd' and 'Death In Venice'. But I am actually going to feature more of his orchestral work in this episode. There'll be a bit of singing today but I'm going to save up his operas for another time. You'll hear some of his Violin Concerto, Simple Symphony, Ceremony of Carols, Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, War Requiem, Young Persons Guide To The Orchestra... and the incredible Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes.